Jerx Christmas - Spidey - 6:57 AM
/Welp… another crazy thing just happened. I went out on my back deck to enjoy the last few moments of the night and who do I see out there but Spidey.
And spread out all ove the deck are playing cards with weird shit smeared on them: dijon mustard, hot sauce, shampoo, acne cream, toothpaste, ben-gay. And so on.
“Spidey,” I say, “What the hell are you doing?”
“It’s going to happen. Something’s going to happen,” he said. He had a crazed look in his eye. “Look what I discovered,” he said.
And I was caught somewhere between being sort of impressed that he discovered this and a bit perturbed about how he discovered it. And I was like, “That’s cool, man. But I really don’t think you’re just going to stumble over some other crazy combination that has some bizarre effect. Would you mind putting my condiments and toiletries back?”
Immediately, he snapped out of it. “Oh, jesus, man. I’m sorry. My life has been taken over by smearing stuff on playing cards. I’m fucking losing it!”
“It’s okay, dude, seriously. Calm down.”
He gathered himself. “I feel bad,” he said. “I can’t believe I took all your stuff. As an apology… please take this and share it with your readers.”
I like that a lot. It’s reminiscent of something I posted recently. I like any force where the spectator is making clear choices that affect the outcome, and they can see those repercussions in real time.
When I pick a piece of fruit from a fruit bowl, I’m seeing the fruit I’m selecting, and I’m seeing everything I’m not selecting. For a force to feel like an actual choice, that’s the sensation the spectator needs to have. That’s why I like about this, they’re seeing the results of their choices as things get (seemingly) fairly discarded.
I think I would handle the ending just slightly differently. Instead of asking for a number, I’d say: “You’ve eliminated all but these 10 cards. We can stop here and go with the top card as your choice, or we can eliminate that top card.”
If they say they want the top card to be their choice, you can do a double and turn it over.
If not, you turn over the top card and use the handling you described. But instead of counting to a number, you’re slowing things down even further. And they get to choose card-by-card to eliminate cards until they finally settle on one.
When they eliminate one, you turn it over. “If you had stopped their you would have ended up with the 4 of Clubs.” So they’re immediately seeing the consequences of their choices. They’re repeatedly seeing the alternate paths they could have chosen. That makes for a strong force.
When they say they want to stop, you just gather up the face-up cards and set them aside, leaving the force card in place.
I like it. Thanks, Spidey. Don’t worry about using up all my chocolate syrup.
By the way, while Spidey was high on calamine lotion fumes, he let it slip that he and Richard Sanders have a packet trick coming out soon through Murphy’s called King Con. As a huge fan of Richard Sanders, it’s something I’ll definitely keep an eye out for.